The Moment They Said It
by Illisandria Carthain
Summary: One day Zim questions the Tallest about whether they really like him or not and the results rock him to his core. .:1Shot:.


**The Moment They Said It**

Zim looked at GIR with a sense of pride. Here was his work, months and moths of modifications and planning that yielded such ripe fruits. With GIR fully operational (and not insane) and upgraded Zim could finally destroy the stupid Dib-monkey and take over the Earth as planned for in Operation Impending Doom II. However, something was bothering him, something the Tallest had said at the beginning of it all. What was it?

_Zim?! But weren't you exiled to Foodcourtia?!!!!_

_Zim?!!!! You're alive?!_

That was it, the worry in the Tallest's voices both when he showed up at Conventia for the Great Assigning and when he first reported back to the Tallest after his first day on this pitiful ball of dirt. That and the word 'exiled'. Wasn't it just a temp job until Operation Impending Doom started up again?

_I mean_, he thought, _even though my PAK is coded for Service Drone, doesn't mean I'm not an Invader. It's just that....they forgot to re-code it._

Still, someting bothered him,_ Do they hate me? They're always upset when I call and seem to constantly be sending me on impossible suicide missions. Then they're even more depressed when I call back, unscathed. _The more he thought about it, the more it worried him. They had to hate him.

"Computer!" He shouted, "Link transmission to the _Massive_, I need to talk to the Almighty Tallest!!!"

**[If you insist Master...] **the AI sighed, **[Streaming live to the _Massive_]**

The Tallest's faces appeared on the screen and neither Red nor Purple were pleased to see the diminutive Irkan ex-Invader. "What do you want now Zim?" Red sighed.

"Yeah!" Purple chimed in, "We're in the middle of a celebration. Invader Kim just took over Alpha Centauri III!"

"My Tallest, it has come to my attention that you are often displeased in me-" Zim began.

"You bet your PAK we are" Red said dryly

"But I have a question" Zim continued, "Do you -" He choked slightly, fearing the answer, "Do you hate me?..." his voice was barely audible, the terror obvious.

There was a strange silence and then Purple spoke up, looking Zim straight in the eyes, "Yes. Yes we do."

Something inside Zim broke, as if his sqeedelyspooch had been punctured and his life's goo was seeping into his gut. "Then my mission...?" He couldn't even finish the sentence.

"Was a lie" Red finished. "We lied to you to get you out of our antennae. Your mission was a lie, your 'advanced SIR' was junk, the entire thing was a ploy to get you as far away from us as possible and, hopefully killing you in the process. The entire 'secret mission' is just another exile." His voice was caustic, his words blunt and precise. "Now do us all a favor and go crawl in a pit and die" And the transmission was cut.

Zim sat and stared at the blank screen, unmoving, listless. GIR walked up to him and saluted, **WHAT ARE YOUR ORDERS MASTER?!**

"Reinitialize original programming." Zim sighed softly, not looking up.

**BUT MASTER THAT WOULD JEPORDIZE THE MISSION---**

"I said 'reinitialize original programming' GIR."

**YES MY MASTER** GIR stared into space as months of work were deleted, nanobyte by nanobyte. GIR's eyes turned teal and he looked at Zim worriedly, "are you okay master?"

Zim said nothing.

* * *

Dib stood in his living room preparing for another full day of saving the world from Zim's alien wrath, putting on his stealth suit and donning a pair of videogoggles so he could stream today's conflict directly to the Swollen Eyeballs after it happened, "Today is the day, I can feel it. Zim hasn't been at Skool for a week so he must be planning something BIG!!!!!"

"Must you talk to yourself out loud?" Gaz asked as she sat on the couch playing her game console, "I'm at the level where the Kraken-pig fires his Mega Laser of Doom at you and if you mess me up -"

The threat hung empty in the air but Dib began to sweat nervously. He dashed out to Zim's place and began his careful infiltration of the alien's home base. Oddly enough the lights were off in the house and the gnomes that served as security guards were missing. He began to get this curious feeling that something was wrong yet he continued anyway. When he opened the door, his fears grew more prominent. Not only was Zim absent for a week, but the power was off in his house, the security system seemed to be down, and the interior of his home base was bare. Where there once was a creepy picture of a monkey was now synthetic drywall and some spiderwebs. It looked as if he had been robbed! Dib dashed into the far recesses of the lair and found two small figures on the floor, one was GIR but the other was-

"Zim!!!!!" He dashed over to the small Irkan form and picked him up. His green skin was pallid, his bone structure was visible and his PAK seemed to be broken.

"help my master dib-monkey, hes hurt reeeeel bad." GIR tugged on Dib's leg. "an i dont wanna be alone..."

"What's wrong?!" He shook the diminutive form fervently, then he turned to GIR, "What happened?"

"masters masters, the tallest told him mean things and he stopped" GIR replied softly, his teal eyes tearing up.

"What do you mean 'stopped'? What did they say?!"

"they told him that his invader-ship was a lie and that i was broken and that they wanted him to die. he shut down the bases systems and then he just quit." the tears ran down his metallic cheeks in rivulets leaving salt marks on his face. "he quit eating, quit moving, quit caring. he said to me 'let the dib-worm come and take me away to be dissected, then at least ill be wanted....' then he lay down and quit everything else." He began to bawl, "save my master dib-boy, i dont wants him to die!!!! i loves him!!!!"

Dib stared in deep though and then turned to the tearful SIR and nodded, "I'll try my best"

For the next few days, Dib spent all his time in Zim's base trying to find out what was wrong, keeping him constantly plugged in to the base's power interface. Then, when all hope seemed lost, Dib found some schematics for his PAK and a backup of Zim's personality and memories. For weeks Dib pieced together his nemesis's PAK, replacing the broken, neglected pieces and repairing the messed-up ones as best he could. Then, one day two months in to the procedure, Zim regained consciousness for a minute or two.

"master?" GIR asked, clutching his rubber pig to his chest, he had never let go of Zim's hand throughout the entire thing.

"GIR?....I'm - I'm alive?..." Zim's voice was weak and strained, "But - but how?"

"Well, look who's up" Dib called as he stood up, his coldfusion torch still in hand, two months worth of grease and grime coating him from head to toe.

"B - but why?..."

"because" GIR stated plainly, "master IS wanted here, by us."

"Us?"

"me, piggy, minimoose, the laser weasels, even the dib monkey."

"The Dib?" He looked at the ten year old, confused. "But why? all Zim has done is bring you pain and the troubles. Why would you want me around?"

"Because," he smiled, "Even though you are my enemy, I guess I still want you around to annoy me daily. Otherwise my life would be very boring. Besides," he added with a wink, "I want to be the one to kill you, not some stupid case of self-loathing."

"hang in there master, dont die, kay?" GIR clutched his hand again as he drifted back into his coma-like sleep. Only this time he wasn't going to stay that way, no, he had people who wanted him and he shouldn't keep them waiting.

**FIN**

* * *

A/N: this is one of those 3am stories that you can't sleep until you've written it down. It's also based loosely of the song 'The Moment I Said It' by Imogene Heap.


End file.
